Date: Wed, 01 Jul 1998 10:12:14 -0700
Subject: Re: Mind & Body, One More Time


Charles B. Guignon wrote:

> Greg and Mike S.:
>
> We need to think about the discussion of mood within the context of
> Dasein's existentials as a whole.  Dasein has a circular being.  It is
>
> always thrown (attuned [gestimmt]), and its mood determines its
> possibilities of understanding, yet, as understnading, it can take up
> its
> situatedness and reinterpret it though the stance it takes.  This
> means
> that we can reorient ourselves through what we do -- a good,
> old-fashioned
> existentialist idea:  humans are self-constituting beings.
>
> I suspect that the talk of "mastery," "will," and "knowledge" is a
> concession to mainstream psychology (perhaps Jaspers?) of his day.  In
> his
> own language, he would say that moods are shaped and transformed
> through
> our interpretations and futural projections.

I'm understanding the relationship here between self-constituting and
thrown-ness as circular. Another circularity of Being is the
relationship between Dasein and the world -- i.e., there is no world
without Dasein, there is no Dasein without world. If I have that right,
then what seems dangerous here is the tendency to find an "end-point" to
this circularity by landing on the terms "mastery," "will" and so on.
What concerns me with this "mastery" business is the emphasis on
responsibility -- what you might think of in psychology when you think
of the positive-thinking guys, where the answer to everything is to
build a big strong-man ego that can whip the world into whatever shape
it likes.

Michael S.



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